


Chasing The Light

by paperstorm



Series: Under the Dome [6]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, Canon Divergence - Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Established Bucky Barnes/Steve Rogers, Fix-It, Happy Ending, M/M, POV Bucky Barnes, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Wakanda (Marvel)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-01
Updated: 2019-05-01
Packaged: 2020-02-10 17:04:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,160
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18664645
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paperstorm/pseuds/paperstorm
Summary: “The thing about you and me?” Bucky says, "is that the world isn’t as stubborn as we are. You’re right, I can’t promise it won’t separate us again. But I can promise we’ll find each other again if it does. Because we always do.”Something of an Endgame fix-it, takes place after the snap and assumes Steve comes back after returning the stones (as he would have, had the movies been put in the hands of people who actually cared about Steve Rogers.)





	Chasing The Light

Bodies mill about on the lawn, after the makeshift funeral pyre has floated so far out onto the lake that it can’t be seen anymore. Bucky stands awkwardly among them, unsure of his place. He doesn’t know most of them, and the ones he knows, he doesn’t know well. He’d gotten to know Sam and Natasha a little bit, when they’d visit Wakanda with Steve during their years as fugitives. Sam is not as much of a jerk as Bucky originally thought, and he cares so intensely for Steve so Bucky loves him for that, even if they’ll never be the best of friends. Natasha was hard and prickly and sarcastic but underneath it all, unbelievably kind. Bucky feels her absence profoundly, and wishes he could’ve said goodbye. He knows no one else got to either, other than Barton, and even though this funeral is for Tony Stark, the empty space left by the lack of her presence hangs over it as well.  
   
Shuri approaches him, patting his shoulder from behind and pulling him into a tight hug. He hugs back, keeping her close for a moment longer than maybe he should. He’s been low on friends, since Hydra, and she’s one of the few who really cares about him.  
   
“Will you return to Wakanda?” she asks, dark eyes looking up at him.  
   
“I don’t know,” he answers honestly.  
   
“Where will you go instead, then?”  
   
He laughs quietly, endeared by her persistence. “I don’t know that either. Kinda just taking things one minute at a time. I don’t … have a home. Unlike the rest of them.”  
   
She frowns at him, and smacks him on the arm, not gently. Forcefully, she argues, “you have a home in Wakanda.”  
   
“I don’t really belong there.”  
   
“Did you forget I am the heir to the throne?” She glares. “You belong there if I say you do.”  
   
He nods, and swallows over the emotion that rises thick in his throat. “Thank you.”  
   
She pauses, and looks at him for a moment. He forgets, sometimes, that she’s been inside his head. That she knows every single one of his secrets – probably knows more than he knows himself, because his memory isn’t always reliable. “Where is Captain Rogers?”  
   
“I’m not sure.” Bucky glances around, and doesn’t see him. “Wandered off somewhere.”  
   
“Go find him,” she advises, but it’s an order more than a request. “Discuss whatever needs discussing. Don’t keep anything back, yes?”  
   
He nods, and blinks at the sting behind his eyes. Sometimes empathy hurts. “Yeah.”  
   
“And if you decide to return to us, there will always be a place for you.”  
   
“Thank you,” he repeats. She hugs him again, more fiercely this time, small but strong and wise far beyond her years. In moments where he can be grateful for what he’s been given instead of wounded by what he’s lost, he thanks whoever might be listening for sending her to him.  
   
He finds Steve, around the back of the property by the water. He’s sitting on the grass, knees tucked up against his chest, staring out at the lake. Bucky watches him for a moment. Watches the tension in his shoulders and the rigid, motionless way he’s holding himself. His head isn’t moving, which means he isn’t really seeing whatever his eyes are looking at. He’s just contemplating, in a quiet moment on his own at the funeral of a man Bucky knows meant more to him than Steve’s ever said. He doesn’t want to interrupt, to break the spell, but then Steve’s head turns, revealing his profile. Bucky remembers when that nose was broken badly, resulting in the bump that’s still there along the bridge.  
   
“Hey, Buck.”  
   
“Don’t let me disturb you, if you’re …”  
   
“I’m not.” Steve turns more fully, glancing at Bucky over his shoulder. “You’re not.”  
   
Bucky goes to him, and settles on the ground next to him. He crosses his ankles and leans his elbows on his knees, joining Steve in looking out over the lake. They spent so many afternoons by the lake in Wakanda. This isn’t quite the same.  
   
“Are they gonna be okay?” he asks, referring to Pepper and their daughter. Steve knows who he means without needing clarification.  
   
“They’ll have to be. Don’t have a choice.”  
   
“You weren’t much older than her when you lost your father.”  
   
Steve swallows, and shuts his eyes for a moment. “Feels like a million years ago.”  
   
“Not quite, but close enough.”  
   
Leaning forward a little, Steve rests his chin on his forearms. He looks so much smaller than he is, wrapped up in himself like this.  
   
“It was really five years?”  
   
Steve nods. He looks numb to it, and that scares Bucky a whole lot more than if he were hysterical.  
   
He blows out a breath, and looks out over the lake. “I can’t imagine.”  
   
“We’ve done longer,” Steve says with a shrug, like it’s nothing. It’s the very opposite of nothing, and Bucky can tell Steve feels that, even if this isn’t the time and place to get into it.  
   
“Not in same way.” He wants to take Steve’s hand, but doesn’t know if he should. “I didn’t remember you for most of my time with Hydra. You were in the ice. I missed you, when I was in Europe before you got there, and in Bucharest, but. I’ve never done five years without you. Not really.”  
   
“I have to return the stones.”  
   
Bucky nods. “Yeah. I know.”  
   
“Wait for me, okay?”  
   
“You’ll only be gone a minute,” Bucky says, confused, but then something in Steve’s eyes makes him think he’s wrong about that, even if it makes no sense to him and Steve doesn’t elaborate.  
   
“I promise I’ll come back. Whatever happens.”  
   
Bucky’s frown deepens. Bruce and Sam are approaching, he can see them from the corner of his eye, so he’s running out of time. “What are you talking about, what’s going to happen?”  
   
Steve shakes his head, noticing them approaching as well. “I’ll come back,” he repeats, eyes flashing like it means everything to him that Bucky believes him.  
   
He tries, although it’s difficult, as he hugs Steve next to the platform and Steve promises everything will be okay, to believe any of it. When Steve climbs up and disappears, Bucky jumps like he’s been shot with an electric current, and feels like he just said goodbye to his best friend for the last time. If Steve doesn’t reappear when Bruce flips the switch back, Bucky will be heartbroken, but unsurprised.  
   
But he does. He has a beard again, and much longer hair, and his eyes look exhausted when Bucky searches them, but he’s back, five seconds later, like Bruce promised he would be. It isn’t the appropriate situation to run dramatically into his arms. Bucky wants to. He aches with it, with the desire to touch, to hold him, to pull Steve in and listen for hours as he tells the story of whatever’s left that haunted look on his face and promise him they’ll be together forever, this time. It isn’t a promise Bucky can make, but God, he wants to.  
   
“Where to now, Cap?” Sam asks.  
   
Steve smiles a little sadly, and shrugs one shoulder. Everyone keeps looking to him for answers. Bucky’s seen that play out all day long. It isn’t fair to ask him when there’s no reason for Steve to have any answers, but its asked of him all the same. He’s their leader, especially since Stark is gone, and it’s put a dull burn in the center of Bucky’s chest to watch Steve feel all day like he’s letting down the people who look to him for guidance because he doesn’t know what to do next any more than they do.  
   
“I’ve got a place in Brooklyn,” Steve says eventually. “Guess I should head back there, first. A bunch of my shit is still there.”  
   
The idea of him living alone in the years after the snap, seeing the others who were left alive when he could but living a mostly solitary life, worries Bucky a lot. He’s used to being on his own. Steve isn’t.  
   
“I’ve been thinking … I might head back to D.C. for a while,” Sam says, nodding thoughtfully at the ground in front of them. “I’ve got family there, hadn’t seen them in a few years even before the snap. I don’t know if any of them were left after it, maybe I should … if that’s alright with you.”  
   
“I’m not your commanding officer, Sam,” Steve tells him heavily. The smile on his face is a little fonder, though, and less complicated. He pats Sam on the shoulder. “I’m not givin’ orders this time. You wanna come with us, you’re more than welcome, but you don’t have to.”  
   
Sam nods. They say a temporary goodbye with a long hug and promises to be in touch soon. He claps Bucky familiarly on the arm before he goes. Once he’s out of earshot, Bucky tentatively asks, “us?”  
   
Steve turns to him, a little gloom back in his smile. “I’m not your commanding officer, either. If you’d rather go back to Wakanda, you should do that. I’m sure they’d let you.”  
   
“Shuri said they would.”  
   
“Okay.” Steve nods at him.  
   
Bucky feels for just a moment as if he’s being left behind again, and it makes him speak up when otherwise he might not. Miscommunication has led them to enough troubles. “What do you want?” he asks.  
   
“I’m not telling you where to go, Buck.”  
   
“I’m not asking you to, Steve,” Bucky says, suddenly angry because Steve is just doing what he always does – assuming no one cares about him, willing to sacrifice his own happiness for everyone else, even when they don’t want him to. “I’m asking you to be fucking honest with me. You factor into the equation of my decision whether or not you think you deserve it.”  
   
Steve looks at him, sighing from under a deep frown. For just a second, Bucky thinks Steve isn’t going to say anything. He thinks Steve is just going to tell him to do what he wants, always so sure no one should want to be around him and that if they do it must be because they feel obligated to be there. But then Steve says, “I’d want you to come with me. I’m not gonna tell you that you should. It’s your life. But if I could choose, I’d want you with me.”  
   
“You’re an idiot if you think that isn’t what I want, too,” Bucky tells him, and Steve laughs reluctantly at himself.  
   
His apartment is in Brooklyn Heights, only a few streets over from where they’d lived 90 years ago. The only thing Bucky recognizes are the names on the street signs. Nothing else looks remotely the same.  
  
“Is...?” he asks, and Steve doesn’t need clarification.  
  
“It’s gone. Torn down. I don’t know when.”  
  
Bucky nods. It would have been something, to see their old tenement building. To look up from the street at the fire escape by that window on the fourth floor, where they sat together watching hundreds of sunsets. Bucky used to sneak an arm around him, once the sun had gone down and they were a little safer under the cover of darkness.  
   
Compared to their old place, and to Bucky’s hut in Wakanda, Steve’s apartment is a palace. It has only one bedroom but the rooms are expansive, with old wooden floors that creak when walked on and high ceilings and big windows. It’s filled with meager belongings, but as Bucky looks around, he takes in little pieces of the Steve he knows. Too many books crammed into the shelves on the far wall. Steve’s always coveted books when he managed to acquire them. He only owned a few, in their previous life, but the shelves in this place are stuffed. There’s a big, fluffy blanket draped over the back of the couch. Bucky can easily imagine Steve curled up under it, lost in a good book on a rainy night.  
   
Most wonderfully, instead of purchased artwork, the walls are covered in drawings. They’re all Steve’s, Bucky recognizes the style of his sketch-work, tacked up onto the walls with pins. He’s sketched buildings, and nature, and abstract collections of shapes, and people. Bucky’s greeted by dozens of eyes as he rotates in the middle of the room and absorbs them all. He sees Natasha’s smirk and piercing gaze. Banner’s thick glasses and dopey smile. Wanda’s pretty face and long, flowing hair. The gap between Sam’s teeth. Stark and Barton, in mid-laugh, with crinkles around their eyes and joy on their faces that nearly jumps off the pages. He sees himself the most. His own smiling eyes and clefted chin and square jaw. He’s in different stages in different drawings – in some of them he’s young and bright-eyed with tousled hair and flushed cheeks. In others he’s the soldier again, straggly hair and a hardened expression and a mask covering his mouth. In most of them, he looks like he does now; a beard and long hair pulled half up in a knot, in the robes he’d worn in Wakanda.  
   
Steve is cringing, when Bucky looks back at him. He rubs the back of his neck, embarrassed. “I forgot about all that.”  
   
“They’re amazing, Steve,” Bucky says, letting the emotion into his voice. There’s no need to hide it; not from Steve. Not after everything they’ve been through.  
   
“It was a way to …” Steve shrugs. “Keep everyone with me.”  
   
“Yeah, of course. They’re incredible.”  
   
Steve looks around as well, and halts when his eyes settle on one of Natasha. He blinks a few times, and a muscle in his jaw clenches. Bucky yearns to go over and hug him, but still doesn’t know where they stand, and can’t assume they’ll just pick right back up where they left off when, for Steve, it was half a decade ago the last time they touched.  
   
“I missed you, y’know?” He shifts his gaze back to Bucky, a deep frown on his forehead and vulnerability shimmering in his eyes.  
   
“For me it was no time at all,” Bucky says sadly. “One minute I was staring down at my own hands disappearing right in front of my eyes, and the next minute I woke up right back where I was. Except you weren’t there anymore. But if I’d been alone for five years, not knowing if I’d ever seen you again … I would’ve missed you, too. Every second of every day.”  
   
Steve lowers his head, and Bucky can’t stand it anymore. He moves over to him, holding his hands up tentatively, still leaving the decision to Steve but communicating what he wants in the moment.  
   
“Can I hug you?”  
   
Steve nods without lifting his head, and he clings when Bucky wraps his arms around him. Steve’s fingers squeeze handfuls of the back of Bucky’s jacket, and he pushes his face into Bucky’s neck, inhaling sharply against his ear.  
   
“It’ll be okay,” Bucky breathes, holding him so tightly. Nothing is okay, but he’s at a loss of what else he could possibly say. He can’t, with words, take away the pain coursing through Steve or the trauma of the last five years.  
   
“Okay,” Steve answers.  
   
He insists Bucky takes the one bed. Bucky argues – and wishes they could share it, but doesn’t suggest that – but he ends up in Steve’s bed anyway. He lies in it into the early hours of the night, staring at the ceiling above him, too many thoughts running untethered through his brain to sleep. In the morning, Steve takes him a few blocks to the west to the corner where their old building used to stand. It’s a more modern building but not brand new, maybe a few decades old, with a grocery store on the ground floor. Bucky counts up to the fourth floor, and tries to imagine the fire escape. He can, if he squints. He can almost picture them, sitting on the metal grating with their legs hanging down over the edges, ankles swinging. He can conjure in his mind a vision of himself with a cigarette held loosely between his fingers, nodding absently as Steve nattered on about something he’d read or heard on the radio that afternoon. He used to love listening to Steve, even when he wasn’t particularly interested in the topic at hand. Steve used to get so worked up when he was passionate, and it made Bucky so happy to see him excited about something.  
   
“How did you pay for this place?” Bucky asks, on the third day. He can’t quite imagine Captain America with a job and a steady paycheck.  
   
“Pepper set us all up, all of us who were left.” Steve is stirring tomato sauce on the stove, and doesn’t look up from it as he answers. “Wired money to us every month from Stark Industries.”  
   
“What about now?”  
   
“I’m not sure. We didn’t talk at Tony’s funeral about whether she was going to keep funneling his money to us.”  
   
Bucky’s stomach drops. “Fuck, of course you didn’t. I’m sorry.”  
   
Steve lets go of the wooden spoon and turns. “No, I’m sorry. You didn’t deserve that.”  
   
“I’m gonna stop asking questions like that. I know you don’t know, it’s not fair to expect you to have any answers.”  
   
Steve doesn’t disagree with him. They eat dinner in silence. When he sleeps, Bucky’s mind is invaded with dreams of violence, and blood, and struggling desperately to grasp at a hand that keeps slipping away from him. He can tell, in the morning, that Steve heard him, thrashing and moaning in his sleep. The way Steve looks at him gives it away, but he doesn’t make Bucky talk about it.  
   
They settle into a slow, quiet existence. Bucky is used to that, after two years in hiding and another two in Wakanda. Having someone in the room with him is a vast improvement over the former. He spent so many nights in that tiny apartment in Bucharest, just staring for hours at all the pictures he’d cut out of newspapers and magazines and glued into a series of journals. At first he stared intently at Steve’s face, struggling to withdraw long forgotten memories from the sight of his eyes and his lips and the bump in his nose. Then once he remembered more clearly, he’d keep himself company by having imaginary conversations with him, planning what he might say if Steve ever found him while at the same time hoping Steve never would. He didn’t believe, then, that Steve would ever forgive him for the things he’d done.  
   
There is a cafe on the corner that they frequent, often enough that the staff begin to recognize them and stop asking to take their orders, just bringing them out medium roast coffee, black for Bucky and with milk for Steve, as soon as they sit down. They know who Steve is, and they know what he’s done for the world, so they never let them pay. Steve always insists, and they always turn it down. Instead Steve leaves generous tips for the servers. He shows Bucky something called Netflix, a black and red function on his television that is filled with hundreds of movies and TV shows. Bucky hardly knows what a television is, let alone any other modern technologies. They were invented after Hydra took him away from the world, and he didn’t have anything like that in Wakanda. Bucky enjoys the things called documentaries. He likes learning about the world. He missed so much of it, all those decades.  
   
One evening, Steve falls asleep with his head lolling on Bucky’s shoulder. He hadn’t meant to, and Bucky should maybe wake him up, but he doesn’t. It feels too nice, having Steve close to him. Steve wakes up on his own, after a while, and even after his eyes are open he doesn’t move away. He stays leaned against Bucky’s side, the warm weight of him comforting them both.  
   
Wanda calls, on the fifth day, over a device that allows her hologram to appear in the room as if she were really here, save for the slightly blueish tint of her skin. “We miss you,” she tells them.  
   
“How is everyone?” Steve asks.  
   
“It’s a bit of a mess,” she concedes. “Billions of people suddenly back, when they were gone for so long. But we’re working it out. I’m helping, that feels nice.”  
   
“That’s great, Wanda.” Steve smiles at her.  
   
“Has Shuri been demanding to study you?” Bucky asks.  
   
“I do not demand,” Shuri’s voice yells from the background, and then she appears as well, arms crossed and indignant. “I ask nicely, as you well know, White Wolf.”  
   
“My mistake.” Bucky grins at her, and she rolls her eyes and disappears again.  
   
“Will you visit, soon?” Wanda asks Steve. “Bruce is here too, and Pepper is coming next week with Morgan. Shuri’s developing all kinds of technology to help the whole world pick itself back up. They’d be happy to see you.”  
   
“Maybe,” Steve answers, noncommittally.  
   
He looks a little lost, when the call ends. Bucky takes a chance, and reaches over for Steve’s hand. Steve lets him, lets Bucky thread their fingers together and squeeze around them. He shifts a little closer on the couch, and although Steve’s smile is accompanied by something haunted behind his eyes, it’s still real.  
   
Bucky brings his hand up just for long enough to brush his fingertips over Steve’s full beard. “Wanna tell me about this?”  
   
Steve tilts his head in confusion.  
   
“Would’a taken you more than a week or two to grow it.”  
   
“Oh.” Steve swallows, and stares down at their clasped hands. “I stayed a little longer than I should’ve. Thought about … going back to 1945. Catching you before you fell. Thought about stopping some other things before they happened.”  
   
“Why didn’t you?”  
   
“It wouldn’t change anything. You’d still remember it all, even if I stopped it from happening in the past.”  
   
“Okay.” Bucky can’t make much sense of that explanation, but lets it go.  
   
“I saw Peggy.”  
   
Something squeezes tight around Bucky’s heart, even though he’d been mostly expecting that.  
   
“Figured … she deserved to know. That I survived, that I’m okay, in the future.”  
   
“That must’ve been tough.”  
   
Steve shrugs. He doesn’t elaborate, and Bucky doesn’t ask him to.  
   
Bucky sleeps restlessly again. He’s been lying awake, on his side facing the wall, for maybe an hour when there are quiet footsteps creaking the floor just outside the bedroom door.  
   
“What’s wrong?” he asks. He doesn’t bother turning over to look, he knows it’s Steve. He knows the sound of Steve’s footfalls, the way he breathes, the way his presence feels when it’s close enough to sense.  
   
“I didn’t mean to wake you up,” Steve’s voice says. Soft, regretful.  
   
This time, Bucky does roll over. He blinks in the darkness, takes in Steve’s imposing frame outlined in shadows in the doorway. His shoulders are hunched and his arms are crossed over his chest. Curling in on himself, making himself smaller. Bucky remembers him doing that, during the war, when they were alone. When he was little, Steve used to stretch up, elongating his spine and puffing his chest out, trying desperately to be bigger. Once he got the serum, he missed being small.  
   
“Well, I’m awake now,” Bucky says. “So why don’t you come in and tell me what’s wrong.”  
   
Steve listens, which is a miracle in itself. He moves slowly into the room, sitting on the edge of the bed – his bed – and staring down at his hands where he folds them in his lap. Bucky pushes himself up to sitting, leaning back against the headboard and tucking his legs up under him.  
   
“Can’t sleep.”  
   
“Take your bed back,” Bucky advises. “I’m used to sleeping on the ground, remember?”  
   
Steve shakes his head. “That’s not why I can’t sleep.”  
   
“Why, then?”  
   
“I don’t know, exactly. But I know it isn’t that.”  
   
Bucky nods. He doesn’t speak, he just waits for Steve. Sometimes time moves differently in the middle of the night, but it feels like he waits a long time before Steve gathers his thoughts enough to express them outwardly.  
   
“You remember … everything?”  
   
“The snap didn’t erase our memories. Just killed us for a while.”  
   
“Five years.”  
   
“Yeah.” Bucky nods again, sympathetic this time. Those years left their mark on Steve, it radiates off him with his body heat. He should have been, but he wasn’t expecting Steve to be this shattered. For Bucky it felt like a minute or less, but in that minute Steve was changed into a new person. He’s always been burdened, always struggled so valiantly to bear the weight the world has put on his shoulders, but even in their lowest moments, Bucky has never seen him like this. He used to come to Bucky broken sometimes after particularly difficult missions but it would never last. A night spent clinging to each other on Bucky’s sleep mat, maybe a few tears, allowed to fall only in the safety of Bucky’s arms, and in the morning he’d be on his feet again. It never lingered like this. It never hung over them day after day like a storm cloud. It was Bucky’s trauma, that did.  
   
“You remember Wakanda?” Steve looks up at Bucky briefly, their eyes meeting just for a moment before he drops his gaze again. Bucky wishes he wouldn’t.  
   
“Of course I do.”  
   
“I think we were happy there. I don’t know if I realized how much. Until it was gone.”  
   
“That’s how these things go, isn’t it?” Bucky knows that isn’t helpful, but doesn’t know what more he can say. He, unlike Thanos, can’t snap his fingers and make everything different. They have to live with what they’ve been given. He just doesn’t know if Steve can.  
   
“I guess.”  
   
“I wish I could fix this,” Bucky says, regretful that he can’t.  
   
Steve shakes his head slowly. “It’s not your mess to fix.”  
   
“Hey.” Bucky waits until Steve looks back at him. He leans forward a little, aching to reach out and touch, but he doesn’t. “It’s not yours, either. You didn’t do this, Steve. You saved everyone, you brought us all back.”  
   
“All the people who were still here. Five full years without their kids and their wives and their brothers. That doesn’t get erased just because they got them back.”  
   
“Not for you, either,” Bucky points out, and is soothed just a little when Steve nods in agreement. If Steve is at least willing to admit to it, maybe they can start healing those wounds over.  
   
“I told them about you, once.”  
   
Bucky frowns. “Told who?”  
   
“I ran these support groups. For people who were left behind.”  
   
“Oh.” Bucky thinks about it, and feels his mouth curve into a smile. “Of course you did. Always helping people.”  
   
“I don’t know how much I helped.” Steve sighs and looks back down at this hands. “I needed to try, anyway. Even if … I usually didn’t talk about myself all that much. That wasn’t the point of it. When I did, I told them things they’d already know. That I lost friends, that I was there when it happened and I couldn’t stop it. One time I lost my mind a little and I told them all about you. About Brooklyn before the war, about your capture, about finding you again when you didn’t know me, about being with you in Wakanda after we brought you back in. I just started talking and then I couldn’t stop and I spewed it all over them, and …”  
   
Steve runs out of breath. He closes his eyes and hangs his head, and swears softly.  
   
“And what?” Bucky pushes gently.  
   
“A bunch of them didn’t come back after that.” He sniffs and shakes his head. “I freaked them out. I didn’t do it again.”  
   
“You should have. It’s not fair, that they got to talk about who they missed and you didn’t.”  
   
“I talked to Natasha.”  
   
“Good. That’s good.”  
   
“She’s gone,” Steve whispers.  
   
“I know,” Bucky whispers back. “I’m so sorry. I know she was really special to you.”  
   
“Yeah.”  
   
“You know it’s okay if you’re not the same, right? I doubt anyone is, after what you went through.”  
   
“I’m sitting here talking to a guy who was tortured for almost 70 years about  _what I went through_ ,” Steve mumbles, the words coming out through ground teeth and dripping with distain.  
   
“Don’t do that. You don’t have to be okay just because other people have suffered, too.”  
   
“What am I supposed to do, if I’m not the same?” Steve asks. Finally, he looks back at Bucky again. His eyes are bright with unshed tears, glinting in the moonlight coming through the window. “How do you go on living with yourself if you’re not  _yourself_ anymore?”  
   
“I don’t know,” Bucky admits. “I’ll let you know if I figure it out.”  
   
“We were happy in Wakanda,” Steve says again, wistfully, like he’d give anything to be back there. Bucky certainly would.  
   
“We were. But we had to work that out, too, remember? Things weren’t the same there either, as they were before the war. I wasn’t the same.”  
   
“That’s not your fault.”  
   
“I know it’s not. That’s my point, Steve. It’s not your fault either. I wasn’t the same kid you used to know, that kid fell off a train in 1945 and he’ll never fully come back, but … that doesn’t mean I love you less. Just means I love you different.”  
   
Steve exhales noisily, and unexpectedly he gets up and leaves the room with his hand pressed over his mouth. Bucky is left alone, surrounded by darkness, for a few long moments before he gets up and follows. Steve is in the kitchen, leaning over the counter heavily on his hands, head dropped down and hair falling into his eyes.  
   
“I’m sorry,” he mutters when he hears Bucky come into the room.  
   
“I shouldn’t have said that,” Bucky tells him. He hadn’t meant to. The ground underneath them is still so uneven. For him, everything with Steve was only days ago. Only a few short days ago they were in Wakanda, gearing up for what should have been the last big fight of their lives. Steve had walked off the ramp of the jet, with his friends behind him, with his long hair and soft beard and a smile on his face, pulling Bucky into his arms in front of the King and the Avengers and everyone. Bucky had smiled back, and seen the  _later_ in Steve’s eyes. Later, after the threat was destroyed once and for all, after they’d won the battle, they’d go back to Bucky’s hut on the border, where they’d spent the better part of two years wrapped up in each other, in a sanctuary like they hadn’t had since their apartment in Brooklyn before the war. For Bucky, it feels like last week. For Steve, it’s been half an age.  
   
Steve shakes his head. “Don’t be sorry.”  
   
“It’s okay if you don’t feel the same way anymore.”  
   
“I do,” Steve admits. “Bucky, of course I do. I don’t … I don’t know how to not love you. I never have. I just don’t know what that means this time. I don’t know how we get it back. Again.”  
   
“Same way we did last time.” Bucky doesn’t mention the burst in his chest, the glorious emotional throb. All he wants is Steve back the way he had him before. “We just … figure it out. Together.”  
   
“I don’t know if I want to be Captain America anymore,” Steve says, the words catching into his throat.  
   
Bucky moves closer to him, tentatively reaching out and when Steve doesn’t flinch away, Bucky slides a hand over his shoulder, up to the back of his neck, down his spine. Steve tilts his head in Bucky’s direction and Bucky takes the invitation, stepping in closer and resting his forehead against Steve’s hair.  
   
“It never stops,” Steve whispers. “We fight and fight and it never ends, there’s always something else around the next corner, something worse. I can’t imagine anything worse than Thanos but it’s out there, whatever it is, and I can’t … even when we win, we still lose. And it never, ever ends.”  
   
“We’ll work it out,” Bucky swears. It’s mostly empty, he doesn’t have any more answers than Steve and it feels like a lie even though he means it with everything he has in him. No matter what else comes their way, Bucky is sure they can tackle it if they do it together. “You don’t have to do this alone. Whatever happens, you’ve never been alone. Stark and Natasha are gone, but you’ve got Sam and Wanda and Barton and Banner and the Wakandans, and me. You’ve always got me.”  
   
“You can’t promise that. I’ve lost you so many times.” Tears spill over the wet rims of his eyes, leaving shiny lines down his cheeks. Bucky brings his flesh hand up to wipe them away. It’s the first time Steve’s cried, since they’ve been here, and it hurts to see him sad but Bucky thinks they both need it.  
   
“The thing about you and me?” he says, with emotion wavering in his voice. “Is that the world isn’t as stubborn as we are. You’re right, I can’t promise it won’t separate us again. But I can promise we’ll find each other again if it does. Because we always do.”  
   
Steve sniffs, and he lets Bucky pull him in closer. He lets Bucky wrap him up, one real arm and one vibranium around his broad back, holding him tightly, barefoot in the dark kitchen.  
   
“I’ve loved you since before I can remember,” Steve says breathlessly against Bucky’s neck. “I missed you so fucking much, felt like there was a giant hole in my chest. I counted the days.”  
   
“You did?”  
   
Steve nods, and removes himself from Bucky’s arms to take a scrap of paper off the refrigerator, tucked around the side of it and secured in place with a magnet. Bucky hadn’t noticed it before. He holds it out. In the center, around leftover lead markings from five years worth of writing and erasing and rewriting, it says 1,967.  
   
Bucky exhales, and has to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from bursting dramatically into tears. “It was really over five years.”  
   
“Did you think we were kidding?” Steve asks, shaking his head sadly.  
   
“No. It’s just devastating.”  
   
“Everything that’s happened to you, and you’re sad for me.” Steve shakes his head again, self-deprecation dripping off every word.  
   
Bucky tosses the scrap of paper to the ground, and nearly falls back into Steve’s arms, gripping him tight enough to hurt. “I can’t be sad for both of us?”  
   
“Bucky.”  
   
He takes Steve’s face in his hands, thumbs sliding through his beard. If it weren’t for the painful clenching in his chest and the ache in his heart, they could be back in Wakanda, standing together on the shore of the lake at sunset, arms around each other and lives intertwined again like they always should have been. In a kinder world, they would have been born in a time when they could be together freely, and there would be no wars or evil forces tearing them apart. In the world they have, Bucky can’t regret any of it, because it’s led them here, back to each other.  
   
“Tell me you know I love you,” he requests urgently. There are fresh tears on Steve’s face, slipping down his cheeks, and his hands squeeze around Bucky’s hips. “Tell me you believe that, tell me you believe I loved you in Brooklyn when you were 90 pounds with bruised knuckles and a chip on your shoulder, tell me you believe I loved you every single day while Hydra had me, even if I couldn’t remember it, tell me you believe I loved you in Romania before you found me, tell me you know I loved you in Wakanda when you’d come to me bloody and battered from a mission and let me put you back together.”  
   
“Bucky,” Steve says again, harsh and raspy, leaning his forehead against Bucky’s. He’s shaking in Bucky’s arms.  
   
“Tell me,” Bucky insists. “I know everything’s a mess right now, I know you’re drowning in not knowing how to fix it and terrified something even worse might be coming. But as long as you believe I love you that much, we can tackle it. Whatever it is.”  
   
“I believe you.” It’s just a whisper of breath against Bucky’s cheek, but it’s everything he needs.  
   
He surges forward into a brutal kiss, quick and urgent and desperate, moving his mouth against Steve’s like he’ll suffocate if he stops. Steve whimpers against his lips and kisses back just as frantically, parting his lips to let Bucky push his tongue inside. He wants to climb into Steve’s skin, feeling panicked and calm all at once, needing more than anything to kiss everything he feels into Steve’s lips so he can soothe him, bind them back together and give them steadier ground to stand on. Steve is saying his name, gasping it against Bucky’s mouth, strong arms hugging around his waist like he never, ever wants to let go. Bucky makes him, just for long enough to pull him back towards the bedroom so they can crash together onto the bed in a tangle of limbs and broken hearts and possibilities for mending wounds that have been open for decades.  
   
“I love you,” Steve is whispering to him. “I don’t know how to get my head around having you back, it’s still like a dream and I’m terrified I’m gonna wake up.”  
   
“I’m here,” Bucky promises. He lies between Steve’s legs, kissing him until they have to break apart to draw ragged breaths into their aching lungs.  
   
“It’s why I didn’t … why I’ve been distant.” Steve inhales a quick, shaky breath and lets it out just as unevenly, his eyes still wild and shining with tears and staring up at Bucky. “I’m so fucking scared I’m gonna close my eyes one night and when I open them again you’ll be gone. I can’t lose you again, Bucky, I can’t.”  
   
“I’m right here,” Bucky says forcefully. He takes Steve’s hand and squeezes it too hard, makes it hurt, makes sure Steve feels him. “Pinch yourself a hundred times if that’s what you need. You’re not dreaming, I’m here and I’m not going anywhere. Not without you.”  
   
Steve inhales sharply again and Bucky kisses his open mouth, rocking into him desperately, needing just as much as Steve does to feel him and breathe him in and know that they’re both alive.  
   
“Need you,” Steve gasps. His hands grip Bucky’s ass, pushing him down, urging him to grind into Steve rough and quick. “Please.”  
   
“You got me,” Bucky soothes. “Tell me what you need.”  
   
“ _You_ ,” Steve repeats. He mouths along Bucky’s jaw and snaps his hips up, blood rushing between their legs, familiar and brand new all at once. “Make me feel again, okay? I’ve been numb for so long.”  
   
Bucky takes him apart, starting out rough and bruising like Steve begs for but then letting it mellow, letting the thrusts of his hips slow and the sweeps of his lips soften. He holds Steve as pieces in his arms, tenderly giving him everything back that he lost when the snap destroyed half the world, keeping Steve together while he crumbles. There are tears on his own face, too, when Steve comes underneath him, with shudders and gasps and broken, beautiful sounds that are nicer than the most elegant music in Bucky’s ears. Steve clings to him as they lie together, sweat in their hair and finger-shaped welts on their arms and hips and the smell of them together the same as it was a century ago the first time Steve begged Bucky to fuck him and Bucky gave in and took that sweet, lithe body and made it his own.  
   
“Stay with me,” Steve breathes into Bucky’s hair, not letting him up, not even letting him move so Bucky can slip out of his body. He keeps Bucky there, keeps them connected in their most intimate places, and Bucky can feel the need for it still radiating off Steve like heat waves, so he makes no attempt to move.  
   
He knows Steve isn’t asking him just to stay for the night. Bucky still can’t promise forever. He still can’t say for sure something new isn’t waiting in the wings to rip them apart once again. But he can promise to stay, for as long as the world lets him. He can promise that he’ll fight with everything he has to keep them together this time, that he’ll move heaven and earth before he lets anything take Steve from him again.  
   
“I will.”  
   
On the tarmac in Wakanda a week later, Steve shakes T’Challa’s hand heartily, the King wrapping both his hands around Steve’s and thanking him for coming in his quiet, regal voice. Shuri scurries up to them like a puppy who’s been let loose and jumps into Bucky’s arms. He laughs as he catches her, and hugs her close to his chest.  
   
“About time you jerks showed up,” she chastises when he lets her go.  
   
“We had some things to work out.”  
   
“You couldn’t have saved the lovers’ quarrels for after we put the world back together?”  
   
“Shuri,” T’Challa reprimands, annoyed and fond at the same time.  
   
“No quarrels. We’re good,” Steve says, without a trace of embarrassment. He puts his arm around Bucky’s shoulders and kisses his hair, right in front of everyone. Bucky blushes a little only because Shuri makes a face at him, but lets Steve show him public affection because it’s wonderful that he can. They might have never had this again. Since they do, Bucky would let Steve carve it into the sky.  
   
Wanda and Bruce step forward from the small crowd that have gathered to welcome them, and they both greet Steve with hugs. “We have so much to show you,” Wanda tells him, her eyes gleaming. Bucky knows enough of her story to know she’s lived a life similar in some ways to his own, with kidnap and experimentation and being used by Hydra as a weapon in her past. Bucky found his own redemption here, and it seems she has as well.  
   
“Come!” Shuri demands, wrapping her hand around Bucky’s wrist and dragging him off in the direction of the palace.  
   
Bucky glances back at Steve over his shoulder. He’s smiling, the sunshine gleaming down onto his hair, as beautiful and golden as he’s ever been. He winks, and Bucky smiles back at him, just for a moment before he’s out of sight.  
 

**Author's Note:**

> [come talk to me on tumblr if you want!](http://paper-storm.tumblr.com/)


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